The One CEO Who Made Steve Jobs Left His Position At Apple

Who is John Sculley?

John Sculley, an American businessman, and investor was born in 1939. He is known for his time working at PepsiCo.

In 1967, Scully participated in PepsiCo’s 6-month training program for interns. After that, he became an official employee. In 1970, at the age of 30, he became the world-renowned beverage company’s youngest vice president of marketing.

With legendary campaigns like the “Pepsi Challenge” and “Cola Wars,” Sculley made a significant contribution to helping Pepsi became the number 1 beverage brand in 1970.

In 1977, Sculley became the company’s president.

Selling beverage for the rest of his life or changing the world together?

John Sculley and Steve Jobs first met each other in 1982. At that time, Sculley was still the president of PepsiCo and Steve was looking for a CEO since the board of directors believed that the Apple co-founder wasn’t fit for that position.

The board of directors hoped that Sculley would bring better marketing strategies to the company.

Being the chairman of PepsiCo with a generous remuneration package, Scully hesitated. He said in an interview with CNBC Make It.

Steve then stopped, thought for a moment, and asked Sculley if he wanted to sell beverages for the rest of his life or changed the world.

And on April 11, 1983, Sculley joined Apple and became its new CEO.

The different mindset

Despite a positive start, contradictions in marketing strategy soon arose. In 1985, with Jobs’ direction, Apple launched Lisa, the first computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). It was a great technology, but the sales were pathetic.

The next project was Macintosh. The sales situation was getting better but still couldn’t improve Apple’s reputation in the PC market. So, Jobs wanted to lower the price of Macintosh and boost the product line’s marketing.

Sculley quoted what Jobs said at that time.

The sales of Macintosh weren’t up to expectation.

Sculley’s opinion was the opposite. He believed he was recruited into the company to promote the Apple II and the Macintosh was just creating unrealistic demand. The company would suffer if it reduced the price of the product but still needed to spend a lot of money on marketing. Meanwhile, Apple was expected to meet its financial goals and only the strong sales of Apple II could support that.

At that time, the board of directors was on Sculley’s side. The CEO decided to ask Jobs to leave the Macintosh division.

Shortly after that, for not being able to reach a solution together, Jobs left Apple.

The Sculley era

 After leaving Apple, Jobs founded a new company called NeXT, continuing his dream in the PC market. And Apple, with Sculley, released the System 7 operating system, bring colors to Mac.

But the CEO also made a lot of mistakes. His marketing power couldn’t compensate for his inadequate product management skills. Sculley believed in costly campaigns. He invested heavily in Apple Newton, cameras and CD players but all became failures.

His biggest mistake was to bet Apple’s future on PowerPC, a new type of processor. The company paid a heavy price for converting its designs to new standards while maintaining a high price.

In 1993, after the bad first quarter in the context of the increasingly fierce war for computer prices, the conflict between Sculley and the board of directors arose. After that, he was asked to leave his position.

A never-repaired broken relationship

The pair used to be best friends but with their different mindsets, Steve Jobs and John Sculley became two strangers in each other’s life.

Sculley said at a conference in 2015.